Of Studies
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring;for ornament, is in discourse;and for ability, is in the judgement and disposition of business.For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one;but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs,come best from those that are learned.To spend too much time in studies is sloth;to use them too much for ornament,is affectation;to make judgement wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar.They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience:for natural abilities are like natural plants,that need pruning by study;and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large,except they be bounded in by experience.Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them;for they teach not their own use;but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.Read not to contradict and confute;nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse;but to weigh and consider.Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,and some few to be chewed and digested;that is, some books are to be read only in parts;others to be read, but not curiously;and some few to be read wholly,and with diligence and attention.Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others;but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books;else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things.Reading makes a full man conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.And therefore,if a man write littlehe had need have a great memory;if he confer little, he had need have a present wit;and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he does not.Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle;natural philosophy deep; moral grave;logic and rhetoric able to contend.
